Sunibook

Grikor Mirzaian Suni’s book (ca. 1919), “Armenian Music: Sketches in Armenian Musicological History” has just been published for the first time, summer of 2005, in the original Armenian, also with a newly made English translation, along with Suni’s autobiography! You can read here the English portion of “Armenian Music: Sketches in Armenian Musicological History” in 49 pages; 65 pages including the autobiography. The entire book with Armenian and English texts is 139 pages.

Suni wrote this treatise in a notebook made in Iran where Suni had lived ca.1919-20, so we assume he wrote it then. This handwritten treasure was saved by Suni’s family in Philadelphia for 60 years. In 1997, a copy was taken to Yerevan, Armenia to the archive where works of Suni, Komitas, and other important Armenian musical figures are kept, in the archive of the Museum of Literature and Art, directed by Henrik Bakhchinyan.

Henrik Bakhchinyan and the other musicologists, particularly Marine Mousheghian, said that this treatise of Suni’s was important and unique, and that no other such overview of Armenian musicological history exists. They chose to publish it, and agreed to add an English translation to the Armenian text within this volume.

Designer Gourgen Gasparian chose for the book’s cover a profile photo of Suni which draws us to the artistic nature of this unique musician and patriot, one of the founders of modern Armenian music.